Northeast

By Omar Eltorai, Arbor Realty Trust To understand the affordable housing market in spring 2022, one needs to first assess how this sector weathered the pandemic and then assess the current state of housing affordability across the country. In-depth findings on these trends are included in the Arbor Realty Trust-Chandan Economics Affordable Housing Trends Report, from which this article is excerpted. Weathering the Pandemic When it comes to the pandemic response, federal policymakers proved effective at defusing a large-scale increase in homelessness from financially insecure households. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) eviction moratorium, while unpopular among industry advocates, prevented an estimated 1.6 million evictions, according to an analysis by Eviction Lab. After the Supreme Court struck down the federal moratorium in August 2021[1], the wave of evictions that many were forecasting did not immediately materialize. Nationally, tracked eviction filings ticked up but remained well below their pre-pandemic averages, according to Eviction Lab. A key reason why many at-risk renters have remained in their homes is the deployment of funds allocated in the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERA) — a funding pool designed to assist households that are unable to pay rent or utilities. The ERA Program was …